


Of Plants and Pachyderms

by Glinda



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Adventure, Community: Disc_Fest, Friendship, Gen, Hermit Elephants, Quest, discworld fauna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:14:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Serious Plants never expected to be sent on a quest, nor did he expect to have his ‘faithful companion’ for it be a hermit elephant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Plants and Pachyderms

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt 27. Life with a hermit elephant. With thanks to Erika for beta-ing.

The first time Serious Plants had encountered a herd of hermit elephants had been much like most travellers on the plains of Howandaland. He’d woken up one morning to find a village around his tent that hadn’t been there the night before. Unlike most other travellers, one of the huts had followed him when he moved on later in the morning.

For the first few weeks he’d periodically shouted “Go Away!” at the hut, to no avail. All that happened was that it followed him from a slightly bigger distance and watched him reproachfully. Eventually he accepted that he was stuck with his strange and shy companion and got used to breaking camp with the resigned command of “come along, Bob.”

At least that way he didn’t have to think about how a hut could possibly look at him reproachfully, as it didn’t do it anymore.

*

Serious Plants hadn’t always wanted to be a botanist. Mostly because he’d grown up on a farm in the middle of the Sto Plains and the only plant life he saw on a regular basis were cabbages. His parents had fully expected him to be a cabbage farmer like they and their parents, and their parents and so on for the previous seven generations. However, when by the age of ten young Serious Plants was breeding new and interesting varieties of brassicas, they realised that he might have a talent that was being wasted on the cabbages1.

Therefore they’d saved the money from the exploding cabbages carefully and used it to send him off to Quirm once the fad had receded. Quirm wasn’t known as a great centre of learning, but it did have a floral clock, which after a lifetime of brassicas was like an oasis in the desert to young Serious’ imagination and interest.

*

Technically Serious Plants was on a quest. There’d been a whole misunderstanding with the Duke’s sister and the Dower House gardens2. Then there’d been a challenge and the Duke had sent him to Howandaland on what was clearly an impossible quest. Except the plant-life of Howandaland was extremely rich and varied and all things considered, the allowance he’d been provided with was practically riches compared to what he was used to.

1Mostly they realised that while exploding cabbages might have a certain faddish appeal at particular restaurants in Ankh Morpork there was no long-term market for it.   
2The duchess herself was a practical sort of young woman, who kept dragons, and had been pleased to discover someone more interested in her horticultural choices than her bank balance. Had her brother not arrived at an inconvenient moment she would have offered him the job of Head Gardener and they might have carried on for the next 20 years nodding respectfully to each other every morning and being obsessive about their respective passions in peace.

***

 

As Serious had trundled across the diverse landscapes of Howandaland, wading through swamps, battling through lush rainforests and trudging across arid landscapes (only for them to burst into sudden brilliant life after the rains), he’d realised that it was actually the perfect place to gain a practical education in his craft. Although occasionally, such as when fighting off over-enthusiastic carnivorous plants, it did feel a bit more of a hands on education then he would have liked.

Regardless, he did manage to collect some excellent samples to take back to Quirm one day. He suspected that the Duchess would appreciate plants that would bite lumps out of burglars a great deal more than the kind that looked pretty but did nothing.

*

Over the years, Serious Plants made many attempts to discover what exactly Bob ate. The natural habitat of the hermit elephant was the plains but for most of their travels Serious Plants and Bob were in completely different terrain. In the end though, Serious Plants eventually gave it up, he just didn’t have the sustained persistence3 of a naturalist to break through a hermit elephant’s determined reserve. He did conclude that bananas were an important element; if his own attempts to forage for food proved unsuccessful, he would often find a bunch of bananas outside his tent in the morning.

*

Eventually the Duke challenged an actual decent swordsman to a duel and was promptly killed.

*

A few years later news reached Serious Plants in a long and roundabout way of the Duke’s demise. Dwarf mail wasn’t common in Howandaland but - due to ancient legends about vast temples and statues made of gold – not unheard of these days. The dwarf mail carrier was a friendly sort who, while more interested in what was going on under the ground rather than growing on top of it, was willing to share his ketchup so Serious Plants was able to offer a decent meal in return for receipt of mail.

The Duchess’ letter was in her usual practical and down to earth style, and Serious Plants got the feeling she was more relieved than actually upset by her brother’s demise. He’d left a son of the level headed sort who actually had the ability to admit when he had no idea what he was doing, and seemed to mostly leave her to her dragons when he didn’t need non-partisan advice.

She wrote in great detail about the gardens and how they needed a firm hand, so Serious Plants understood himself to be summoned and began the long journey back to Quirm.

3For persistence read rudeness

***

 

In the end it took him the best part of three years to get back, hampered slightly by being kidnapped several times by competing traders and local tribes, nearly eaten by alligators twice and once nearly falling down a fissure in the earth while examining a rare orchid. Bob, in the meantime, became an expert in rescuing Serious Plants from certain death.

*

Serious Plants did eventually get to spend some quality time in the fine glasshouses of the Dowager House of Quirm. Most of the time he even got peace to experiment and crossbreed to his heart’s content. Naturally he had to maintain the rest of the vast gardens, a task somewhat hampered by most of the damage being caused by Bob’s continued insistence on following him around on his rounds.

Handily the Duchess proved to be amenable to his re-designing the gardens so that the paths were all wide enough to allow a hermit elephant to pass unhindered. After Bob had helped in the clean up after a particularly wild storm, the Duchess had come to think of the Bob as every bit as essential a member of staff as Serious Plants himself.

Besides, what no one but Serious Plants and the Duchess knew was that Hermit Elephant dung was particularly good for the breed of carnivorous plants that now made their home around the Dower House walls. They grew big and strong, and were perfect for pest control – disposing of assassins, unlicensed thieves and unwelcome suitors with admirable efficiency4.

Finally, the inevitable happened. Despite the late Duke’s machinations causing a ten year hiatus, Serious Plants and the Duchess developed a solid friendship, based on a mutual respect for each other’s obsessions, a willingness to leave each other in peace with their own and an unerring ability to utterly ignore being followed around the vast gardens by collection of moving huts.

Though they never could figure out where Bob was still finding those bananas.

4Strangely enough, of those few who did manage to escape the clutches of the plants, they all seemed to take refuge in the conveniently located shambolic huts that had never been there when they cased the Dower House in daylight. They soon found out how truly intense Hermit Elephants get about having their privacy invaded.


End file.
